201–210 of 229 posts
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I would be a happy Flutter convert if the Web output was better.
I think they're working on it. There seems to be an HTML renderer now in addition to the canvas implementation.
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Do Flutter and cover all 3. Okay Flutter Web is pretty bad, but if you are cash strapped and need to move fast, Flutter is the way to go. I expect more and more startups to embrace Flutter, it is easily currently the best solution on the market (for 99% of app ideas). Yes native will always be better, but if you are a startup, your focus should be building an MVP and getting to product-market-fit as fast as possible…
I would be a happy Flutter convert if the Web output was better.
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I would be a happy Flutter convert if the Web output was better.
Not having used it but having recently considered it what's so bad about the web output?
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I do the dirty tasks for a non-technical founder. Everybody he hires for a task does heavy corner cutting. Technical debt is enormous. Details are not taken care of. I like the guy, so I help him ignoring cost of opportunity. I do all the plumbing and fixing the tiny details and changes at 2 am. But that’s not sustainable. That’s not the way to build a business with prosperous future.
Do you have a stake in the business?
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Curious, why not React Native? I never heard anything bad about it in Android and iOS (except maybe the resource usage) and at least Microsoft is putting RN as first-tier framework in Windows nowadays.
Ironically, you can't use it for Web. You can't even share components, IME.
Personally though, I've found the DX of Flutter far above RN. I always had random packages break on RN that I had to fix every time, while with Flutter most of what you need is already included in the framework, including a component UI library for Android and iOS.
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I'll make suggestions to anyone doing this: - For slightly more legal protection, the code should be in YOUR OWN git repo, not the dev agency's repo - If you are giving some upfront $ or milestone payment, you should also contractually now own the code up to that point in time - You should not declare a milestone success (and should not pay) until you can independently compile the app straight from git (front end and…
If you can do all this, you're either already a developer and don't need to outsource it, or you have the ability to learn how.
I have a very high level of scepticism towards non-technical founders without deep pockets: 1. There's an agility to being able to change things yourself, at 2am if necessary. That's very important to startups. 2. There's a discipline to not accruing unreasonable technical debt of the type that will sink you two years in that you can't expect from someone who doesn't deeply care. 3. Managing devs generally requires u…
A relative of a friend is a Dr. that had a good idea for a useful product and hired a consultant to build it. After about 18 months and a little over $1M had been invested, the consultant wanted more money and I got pulled in to review everything. What I found was:
1. Work was farmed to an offshore team that made terrible technical decisions and were unable to produce working software
2. Consultant and the offshore team took many detours to increase scope and add lots of new, useful features. Of course, they did this before completing existing ones, so the result was a bloated application with about 20 features at the 80% state. Only logging in actually worked.
3. Too much infrastructure too early. High availability, redundant infrastructure up and running at AWS for a cool $10-15k/month. Keep in mind the product hadn't even gotten to MVP and that's also close to the $20k/month my own startup was spending at AWS for a messaging app for full geo-redundancy w/over 2M active users and capable of handling 1B messages/month.
In short, the Dr. got taken for a huge ride. My advice was to make sure that they were able to get their hands on all of the source code and other IP and then wind it all down.
I had two customers. One came to me after he couldn't get a company in the Ukraine to cooperate. He had already paid them $25k and the website was barely useful. This was an san fransisco exGoogle product manager with more money than sense, zero coding skills, and in love with subscription services. I charged him half for 2 months of work and got the website in front of paying customers. Then $1000 a month for mainte…
Probably bogged down by downloading too many pixels ;) On a serious note though there is something extremely impressive about someone with no coding experience creating a website that makes them money. Even if they're not coding. It'd be like asking someone who can't cook to open a successful restaurant. If it happens at all it's impressive, but doubly so if you don't even hire a chef you just figure it out as you go…
No reason for a non-technical person to spend thousands of dollars to build a basic informative website.
> I'll never depend on a 3rd party dev as the main means of production again. He spent over half of his money on it as well. I've had more than one person come to me with their business idea, and they have a terrible website (or app) that they have spent 100, 200, or even 300k on. And it doesn't even work. If you aren't staring out WITH customers, you either have to code it your damn self, or have a technical co-foun…
Our suppliers routinely deliver junk, yet somehow have the ability to just say "it is what it is, take it or leave it". It's not a pure outsourcing type of arrangement either, and they have other direct relationships to our customers, also.
These aren't some randos with questionable reputation. These are big industry players, one of whom a lot of people in engineering would be familiar with, yet they seem to be able to launder their responsibilities.